Everyone knows what a speeder looks like, right? They were ubiquitous on American railroads at least into the 1970s. Below is a nifty little speeder that plied the rails of Deutsches Bundesbahn and is now displayed at the Railway Museum in Schwarzenberg, Germany.

Hey look its a railroad Smart Car,any info on it?

I'm half expecting Hello Kitty to show up in the cab.....

I was thinking it would be great for a circus act- how many clowns can you squeeze in?

:-)

Steve Hunter

Interesting wheels. It looks like they are built up instead of cast. Is that a weld on the inside of the front wheel on the left of the photo?

Neat looking.
Reminds of me the 'minion' characters from the "Despicable Me" movies...

A ragtop, convertible model, sporty !

Looks a lot fancier than anything that would be used by a track crew. What are the odds that this is an inspection vehicle for use by an official, something like the classy converted automobiles used by Katy brass over the years?



How many railroaders think their officials are a bunch of clowns? :-D

It appears to be a rail version of a Trabant Kuebel.

At the end of World War II the European economy was a shambles. Among the various problems were how to employ the workers from the what had been the German war industry and what to make. The German aircraft industry had lost the market for its warplanes and the automotive industry the market for tanks et cetera. Even had the market still been there they would not have been allowed to produce them. Dr. Porsche's People's Car, the Volkswagen, had proven to be a successful concept even though the war had thoroughly upgephucht production. Among the products developed to fill the various voids was the microcar. If you think of the aforementioned Beetle (with a split rear window and drop down turn signal arms) or an Austin Seven as spacious you have the idea. It seems as if for a while everybody with a functional factory made them, including Junkers and Messerschmidt. Probably the best known example in this country is the BMW Issetta, a rear-engined tricycle with the door in front of the steering wheel and seating for two people only if they were very close friends. Though French, the Citroen 2CV is another well known example. Easy to mass produce, cheap to buy and meeting a very real need.

Many of these things came back with returning GIs. I remember a grad assistant who had brought one of oddballs back from a post-war tour with the Occupation Forces and he not only had difficulty getting parts for it, he had a running series of skirmishes with the old NJ Highway Patrol about whether the thing was even roadworthy!

The auto industry in West Germany developed bigger and better cars as its economy improved until coming full circle to the SMART. In the Eastern Zone, also known as the Deutsche Demokratische Republik,things did not go so well. The motor car available to those members of the general public who could afford them and get permission was the Trabant. Before the wall came down and market forces intervened these were not well made cars at all. [See Note 1] They did not have engines per se but what was really a pollution emitter which provided somewhat reliable propulsion as a by-product.

The museum in question is in Saxony which is in what was the Eastern Zone. The are several pictures which show more of these things in various colors. One of the captions translated roughly refers to them as rail motorcycles (Speeder would work just as well) and further describes them as Rail Trabants. In the DDR if the Ministry of Railways told you you were getting some two seat Tabants it simply did not matter that Fairmont or Plasser had a better, cheaper product.

What is really interesting here is that the museum has some old Trabants which look good and may actually run.

GME

Note 1: http://content.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1658545_1658533_1658030,00.html